Moderation: Goggo Gensch
Guest: Dr. Christine Follmann (Kuratorin Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Italienische Kunst vor 1800)
Derek Jarman's classic of European cinema is the adaptation of the wild life of Renaissance painter Caravaggio (Nigel Terry). Famous as the creator of dark and erotic works, often unsettling to his wealthy and powerful patrons and supporters – distrusted for his associations with hustlers and day laborers. He lives in a ménage à trois with the handsome thief Ranucchio (Sean Bean) and his wife, the prostitute Lena (Tilda Swinton), who also serve as models for his most famous paintings. The three-way relationship ends with Lena's tragic death, leaving Caravaggio to spend the rest of his life on the run.
Derek Jarman (1942-1994) ingeniously captures the painter's life and translates his visual language into an exhilarating film portrait, which has since become one of the great classics of European cinema. "Caravaggio," premiered and awarded at the Berlinale in 1986, remains a milestone in gay film history and one of the few truly adequate films about art and painting.
